Nicolas Gaudichet

Donetsk: Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine have paraded dozens of captured soldiers before a jeering crowd to mock Independence Day celebrations in the capital.

Ukraine's pro-Western government had sought to boost morale with an upbeat military parade to mark the country's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Speaking to a crowd of thousands in the iconic Independence Square, known locally as the Maidan, President Petro Poroshenko decried Russian "aggression" and said he was "convinced that the battle for Ukraine, for independence, will be our success."

People take a picture with the world's biggest Ukrainian flag during Independence Day celebrations in Kiev. Photo: Sergei Supinsky

But it was markedly different scene in the eastern rebel stronghold of Donetsk, where around 40 or 50 captured government soldiers were paraded through the city's central Lenin Square as onlookers hurled garbage and empty bottles at them.

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"You are killing children," screamed some in the crowd as the prisoners walked towards buses with their heads bowed and their hands behind their backs. Their destination was unknown.

The grim scene appeared designed to recall the famous moment in 1944 when thousands of captured Nazi soldiers were paraded through Moscow on Stalin's orders.

Human Rights Watch deputy director Rachel Denber said on Twitter that the event amounted to "humiliating and degrading treatment" of prisoners and was therefore in breach of the Geneva Convention.

Ukraine and the West blame Russia for supporting the separatist insurgents still clinging on to territory after four months of fighting in the restive east.

"War has come to us from over the horizon where it was never expected," Mr Poroshenko told the crowd in the Maidan, many of whom sported the blue and yellow national colours and traditional dress as they celebrated the first military parade in five years.

He said some of the equipment rolling through the Maidan, which included tanks and Grad missile systems – controversial for the indiscriminate damage they have caused in the east – would be sent straight back to the front lines after the display.

"In the 21st century, in the centre of Europe, there is a flagrant attempt to breach the border of a sovereign state without declaring war," he said.

"It is as if the world has returned to the 1930s, the eve of World War II."

Poroshenko pledged 40 billion hryvnias ($A3.25 billion) to its cash-strapped army over the next three years for the purchase of warplanes, warships and helicopters. He called it "only the modest beginning" of the rebirth of the Ukrainian military.

Kiev's conflict with the pro-Russian rebels in the separatist regions of Lugansk and Donetsk has claimed more than 2,200 lives since April. There is mounting concern over civilian casualties as the government presses closer into the rebel's last redoubts.

Human rights organisations have said both sides of the conflict are guilty of using indiscriminate weapons and urged against locating military targets in urban areas.

A number of Western leaders, including US President Barack Obama, congratulated Ukraine on Independence Day, while Pope Francis sent a message of peace.

Ukraine's leader is under pressure to forge some form of agreement with Russia's President Vladimir Putin when they meet alongside EU officials in Minsk tomorrow.